[MUSIC PLAYING]
Some of the really creative things that I had the opportunity to do as a health care executive was partnering with academic organizations. We did not have enough master’s prepared nurses at the time that I was in an executive role for the health system. We did not have enough surgical techs, which actually are still we do not have enough of.
And so partnering directly with organizations to say, hey, how can we put some of our nurse executives, our nurse leaders through a master’s program dedicated to our organization? Many of our executive leaders would be part of the curriculum. Many of your academic leaders would be part of the curriculum. And we would help them get through a two-year master’s program, whether it was in a clinical master’s program or whether it was in a management master’s program. And then that way we, of course, were building for our own futures.
And so we had an opportunity to do that with Marquette University, which was one of the best academic organizations in the country for nursing and nursing leadership. We also took interviews throughout our organization of 15,000 employees, and we created our own surgical tech program. And we hired from within. So people within our organizations that were looking for a promotional opportunity, they were looking for a way to move up, gain new skills, we interviewed for that. We only hired our own employees.
We worked with a local organization that had a two-year surgical tech program. We asked them to make an accelerated program. We freed up our own classrooms, our own conference rooms, our own ORs to help train our own future surgical techs.
So I do think there are a lot of creative things you can do. And it all takes money, I understand that, but you’re investing in your future. You’re investing in yourself. And if you’re doing it, again, for your own employees, it also helps build that culture of we take care of our own team members. We invest in their own education and development. We are an organization that believes in continually educating and bringing people up.
And so those are just a couple of the fun things that we had the opportunity to do when I was in a large integrated health care system, when you’ve got at least 15,000 people working there is helping those solve a problem in our organization, as well as continue to grow and learn in their own careers.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
